So I told Asher I had a migraine and needed to lie down. Alone. He reluctantly let me, but I expect he’ll be back to check on me, and if he catches me crying, I can at least blame it on the fake pain that’s supposed to be crippling me. The pain is all too real and it is crippling: it’s just in my heart, not my head.
Beck is alive. Alive.
The betrayal I feel is indescribable and incomparable to anything else I’ve ever felt, even when I thought he was dead. But the thing that disturbs me even more is the fact that, after seeing him, those old feelings of love have risen to the surface. And that makes me angry…at myself. Now I feel like I’m the one doing the betraying.
What are you supposed to do with the fact that the person you were in love with…what? Faked his death? Thought having a family with you was so repugnant he’d rather you think he was taking a dirt nap than break things off face-to-face? Who does that?
Why aren’t I worthy? Why am I not deserving of anyone’s love? Why am I not worthy of anyone’s trust? Why did my father not love me enough to sacrifice for me? Why did my mother turn her back on me? Why did Livia desert me for three long years?
This last month with Asher has single-handedly been the best of my life and, until Saturday night, I was even starting to truly believe that maybe I’d found my person. The one who would really and unconditionally love me, maybe even for the rest of my life, but after seeing Beck, I’m back to doubts and whys again.
Why?
Why?
Why?
No answers. Only questions.
And secrets and lies and hurt and betrayal.
It’s a never-ending vicious circle from which I can’t escape and I’m tired of it. I want off this self-destructing ride. Anger and bitterness and resentment have taken up permanent residence inside me and I want them gone.
I want to believe again.
In goodness and integrity and loyalty.
In dreams and hope and love.
In me.
I’ve been replaying Cooper’s words since Monday, trying to figure out what I’m going to do. “There are things you don’t know. Things you don’t understand, and I think if you knew them, you’d see the situation in an entirely different light. He’s…well, he’s suffered just as much as you have, if not more.”
The thought of seeing Beck turns my insides to a ball of knots. I don’t think I can hear what he has to say and even if I would consider it, how can I possibly believe a single word? He’s let me believe all this time he’s been dead, so it’s pretty clear he didn’t want me to know he wasn’t.
On the other hand, how can I move forward with this all this toxic shit swirling inside me like an electrical storm, threatening to obliterate anything and everything in its path? Threatening to ruin what I’ve tenuously built with Asher?
I think back to the five days I spent in the hospital. I remember little about the first two, because the pain meds made my brain fuzzy and sleepy, but I will never forget the words my father told me on day three while he sat on the corner of my bed holding my hand.
“What happened?” Everything hurts like I’ve been run over by a truck or dropped from the top of a building.
“You don’t remember?”
Remember? There’s something trying to work its way into the frontal lobe of my brain, but I can’t quite grasp it. The elusive memory hangs in the dark fringes, trying to protect me. “No. I can’t…”
“We talked about this yesterday. You were in a car accident, sweetheart. You’re lucky to have survived.”
Accident? Car? I try to wade through the sludge that is slowing my brain function down. In retrospect, I wish I didn’t, because the second the memory slams into me, I am hysterical.
Beck.
Baby.
“Beck, Beck, where is Beck?” I cry.
My father looks angry. The tone he uses when he speaks the words that will ruin my future is completely at odds with the look of pure rage on his face. “The driver didn’t make it. Blunt force trauma to the head. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
I’m sorry.
I break. My dad holds me as I soak his shirt with my grief. The entire time, I think the only thing I have left of Beck is our baby. But later that day the doctor asks for privacy. Because I am eighteen, my ‘condition’ hasn’t’ been revealed to my family.
“Alyse, were you aware that you were pregnant?”
Even in my drugged state, I don’t miss the use of the word ‘were.’ I nod, not able to speak through the constriction now shutting off my air supply.
She looks sad, delivering her prerehearsed words with just the right amount of sympathy and sorrow. “I’m sorry to inform you that you miscarried shortly after surgery. Oftentimes the trauma…” She continues to talk, but I stop listening to her words. They are all irrelevant anyway. All that matters in my world is gone. Dead, as if it never existed in the first place. As if these past months never happened.